Greg Jaklewicz: Abilene's oldest Marine honored by his contribution to history

Eric J. Shelton/Reporter-News
Michael Janusz (left) shares a laugh with Clovis Thompson, a former Marine, after the Marine Corps cake-cutting ceremony Friday at the West Texas Rehabilitation Center to celebrate the Corps' 237th birthday.

Happy birthday, Marine.

On Friday, to celebrate the 237th birthday of the Marine Corps, a piece of cake was cut especially for Clovis Thompson, who back in the day was Cpl. Duey C. Thompson of Paducah. Clovis, who will turn 90 next month, is the oldest Marine living in Abilene.

Clovis wasn't wheeled in or assisted by a walker. He's still spry enough to mow the St. Augustine at his home on Briarwood, as well as the yards of neighbors.

"We were raised to work for a living," he said, giving some explanation as to why his generation has been called the nation's greatest. "We volunteered to defend our country. Our backs were against the wall and we fought our way out it."

A farm boy from the eastern side of the Texas Panhandle, Clovis went sent to the South Pacific to fight. He served in the Corps from 1942-45, earning a Silver Star for single-handedly knocking out a Japanese gun emplacement in a cave. When grenades didn't do the job, he asked for dynamite. That worked just fine.

Awarded June 10, 1945, his citation reads: "By his courage and gallant devotion to duty, Corporal Thompson held the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service."

He also was awarded a Purple Heart for taking shrapnel in the upper right chest. A piece of metal, he said, came so fast and hot that it embedded his dungaree shirt into the wound.

"It never bled," he said, adding that he had the metal cut out in the field rather than be taken to a hospital ship. Then it was back to war.

How did these guys do it, these acts of valor without hesitation? Farm boys from Texas and others, to borrow a sports analogy, playing as the visiting team on the enemy's home turf?

"I have no explanation for it," Clovis said. "That's where our Marine training came in. They had us prepared."

Clovis almost wasn't a Marine. Then 19, he had Navy paperwork in hand as he was leaving post office in Wichita Falls. He saw sign for the Marines on his way out.

"I saw that and thought, 'I'd like to be in that outfit,'" he recalled. He was told it'd be two weeks before he'd be sworn in — the same information he had gotten in the Navy office.

"I told them I wanted to go now. I told them, 'If you don't take me, the Navy will. And if the Navy don't take me, the Army sure will,'" Clovis said. Well, that gung-ho type talk got some attention.

"They told me, 'Be back here at 8 o'clock in the morning.' I went from Wichita Falls to Dallas, then onto to San Diego," he said.

Before his time in the Marines, Clovis farmed cotton and worked a year for a roofing company. After he got back to the States and married Mary Jo of Cross Plains, he held several jobs, including owning The Shoe Tree, a West Texas children's footwear chain.

Like so many others who served and survived, he returned home to lead a normal life and build a country. These are folks who have lived next door or down street, raised a family and became involved in their community and church.

But their war experiences are their own; we cannot imagine their fear, their bravery, their hardships, their accomplishments.

Clovis was aboard ship in Tokyo Bay when the war ended. He landed in Japan as part of the postwar operation, still armed and ready for anything. When a man, who spoke some English, remarked, "We got you on Pearl Harbor," Clovis did what any West Texas boy would do.

"I bopped him up the side of the head with the butt of my rifle," he said. "I never did have any more trouble."

Was the United States right in dropping atomic bombs to speed the end to the Pacific War?

"Absolutely," he said. U.S. troops found caves in Japan dug to withstand bombing, big enough for a thousand soldiers and stocked with enough provisions for 30 days, he said. The Japanese were not going go without a fight.

Last month, Clovis lost Mary Jo, to whom he had been married for 65 years. Every day, veterans his age are dying. He knows his generation now is marching toward the pages of history books.